FACE: PROFILE IN STYLE; Barry McGee

By SANDRA BALLENTINE

Published: September 9, 2012

The San Francisco-based artist's urban-inspired paintings and installations may pack a serious visual wallop, but his family's cozy Colonial Revival-style house, in the city's Mission district, is completely chill. Artworks by friends and treasures culled from vintage stores and antique markets around the world stand in for formal d?r. ''Everything in the house is connected to us personally,'' McGee says. As much can be said of his no-frills fashion sense. ''Some of my favorite pieces are from thrift shops. When I find something I really love, I live, work and sleep in it.'' Some things, however, he'd sooner let go of. Asked about his current midcareer retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum, he says, ''It's very intense to go back to the past and revive work that I've already experienced and moved forward from. It's like seeing an old girlfriend -- awkward at times, nostalgic at times and downright maddening and embarrassing.''

PHOTOS: Left: an avid surfer, McGee catches a wave at Linda Mar Beach, in Pacifica, Calif. Above: flea-market finds in his Mission district house. Right: a surf photo hangs above the living-room hearth.; Left: McGee loads his Chevrolet Astro. Above: he has over 100 surfboards. Right: with his wife, the artist Clare Rojas; Asha, his daughter; and their dogs, Pinto and Maddy. McGee wears a Brunello Cucinelli jacket. On the wall: Rojas's collection of antique instruments. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADRIAN GAUT); Above: the artist wears a shirt by J. Crew and a sweater by Thom Browne, a favorite designer. Above left: painted surfboards, part of an installation in McGee's survey at the Berkeley Art Museum.; Left: part of the Berkeley Art Museum show. Right: family photos and personal ephemera in the living room. Below: the houses on McGee's block are identical. ''It feels like an architect's experiment,'' he says. ''I don't know of another block like it in San Francisco.'' (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADRIAN GAUT; CHRIS PEREZ)